


An Old Solution

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends With Benefits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:58:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine is having a bad night; Grantaire distracts her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old Solution

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on my writing blog a while back, then took it down because whoa who was I kidding? I can't write smut. But then I realized that literally everything I write lately has an element of smut to it. So. I'm making an attempt to own my filthy-mindedness, or something.

“Distract me,” Éponine commanded, climbing unceremoniously onto Grantaire's lap. He looked up at her and offered her a sip of his whiskey, straight from the bottle, which she accepted gladly. It was two in the morning and she had just walked in on Marius kissing Cosette in Bahorel's room. She was drunk, but she was _not_ going to cry. Girls like her don't cry. They fight, and scream, and fuck, but they don’t cry.

“What’d he do this time?” Grantaire sounded almost exasperated.

Éponine slapped him.

It was not gentle. She knew it was completely unjustified but she was in more pain than she cared to admit and she knew she’d feel better if she hit someone, anyone, it wasn’t _personal_ but she’d hunted him down and now he was just a convenient target. She’d feel bad about it in the morning. At that moment she didn’t care.

A red handprint bloomed on his cheek, but she barely had time to admire it before his shocked look became a frown and his hand caught her squarely in the temple. It wasn’t exactly a love-tap but he was holding back, she knew. It irritated her for some reason. She bared her teeth and hit him again, this time so hard her palm stung.

“What the _fuck_ , Éponine?” he demanded, hitching his knees up abruptly and throwing her off his lap. She collapsed sideways on the couch, scrambling to right herself and glare at him. His whiskey bottle rolled onto the floor, where it lay half-spilled on the carpet. Both of them ignored it.

“Hit me back,” she said.

“No!” he said, annoyed and more than a little confused. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Fuck you!” She was up on her knees and shoving him before she could think about it. He caught her wrists and she growled in frustration, because she was strong, but he was stronger. She pushed back anyway.

“Jesus! Will you cut it out?”

“Let me _go_!”

“Only if you promise to stop trying to hit me!”

She sighed and carefully eased off on the escape attempts, forcing herself to calm down a little. “Okay,” she said finally. “Okay, fine. Look, I’m fine. See?”

He released her slowly, still watching her warily. She settled back on her heels and bit the inside of her cheek, hard, in an attempt to ward off sudden tears. Girls like her don’t cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

“What’d he do?” he asked again.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said stubbornly.

“But you wanna slap the shit out of me over it?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” She pressed her fingers into her eyes until she saw stars. “He was kissing Cosette.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said softly. “Oh, shit, kiddo, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that,” she snapped. She dropped her hands from her face and glared hard at him. “Don’t pity me.”

He raised his hands, palms out. “No pity here. You don’t need my pity, you’re metal as fuck.”

And just like that, despite her best efforts, she burst into tears.

“Thank you,” she sobbed, while he shushed her and apologised and pulled her into an awkward sideways hug. She ended up sprawled half-across his lap, with her hair sticking to the tear tracks on her face and the light from the single bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling blinding her utterly.

“Hey, hey, darling, don’t cry,” Grantaire pleaded. He was smoothing her hair back from her face, carefully, picking damp strands free and combing them back into place with gentle fingers. “Don’t cry, it’s gonna be okay.”

“You don’t really believe that,” she said thickly.

“Shut up, I’m drunk as hell and I’m trying to be comforting,” he retorted. There was no real heat in it. “You _are_ metal as fuck and you _are_ gonna be okay. The world’s fucked up beyond belief and nothing ever goes right for the people who deserve it, but you’re tough as nails. You really are. You’re gonna be fine.”

If anything this only made her cry harder, because he had never spoken to her like this before, and it was the kindest and most earnest compliment she could possibly conceive of. She turned her face into his jeans-clad thigh and took a shuddering breath, willing herself to calm down. Her head was aching and her eyes were burning, but she was smiling, and her hiccupping breaths were halfway to laughter now.

“You’re sweet,” she mumbled into his leg.

“Well, that’s a first,” he said. “No one’s ever accused me of being sweet before.”

She lifted a hand to give him a half-hearted thump in the gut. He caught her wrist again in a loose grip.

“Hey, no more of that. You promised.”

“Sorry,” she said indistinctly, not moving her face. “Guess I’m a violent drunk.”

“Colour me shocked,” he said mockingly. He was still hanging onto her wrist, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it now he had it. She flapped her hand until he let go, and it dropped heavily into his lap, barely an inch from her nose. She was drunk, and she was tired, and Grantaire was warm.

“Come to bed with me,” she said suddenly, tilting her head and enunciating clearly so he couldn’t claim not to have heard her.

He laughed. “First you wanna fight me, now you wanna fuck me.”

“Something like that,” she said seriously, pushing herself up off his thighs and looking at him squarely. “How about it?”

“’Ponine, that’s a terrible idea. You’re only asking because you’re drunk and upset, you know that, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, do what you want. I’m going to bed.”

He didn’t move when she got up and left, but she only spent five minutes breathing quietly in the dark before her bedroom door opened and he walked in.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice came out hoarsened by cigarette smoke and recent tears.

“Hi,” he said. He didn’t turn on the light, just closed the door behind him and kicked off his shoes before picking his way through the mess on the floor and joining her in her bed.

“Did you change your mind?” she asked.

“No,” he said mulishly. He rested his palms on her shoulders and gently pushed her onto her back; he pressed his thumb to one of her collarbones, and then his mouth found the same spot.

She barely suppressed a gasp—which was ridiculous, she wasn’t even especially attracted to him for God’s sake—but she hadn’t really expected him to roll with this stupid idea, and his tongue was warm and wet against her skin and it had been a while for her. She hadn’t realized how touch-starved she was until he started rectifying it. Now she realized what a grave oversight it had been on her part, because just the feeling of his hands inching her singlet up along her abdomen was enough to have her arching her back a little, pressing up into the warmth of his skin.

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” he was saying, but she wasn’t really listening, she just sat up enough to pull her singlet off over her head. Even drunk she’d had the presence of mind to lose her bra before she got into bed, so she was bare from the waist up when she lay back down.

He swore softly under his breath and ducked his head to lay several reverent kisses along her sternum. She tugged impatiently on his hair; he took the hint and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. This time she did gasp, her fingers tightening in his curls, and she arched her back again, not caring how needy it made her look—she’d forgotten how _good_ this could feel. He laughed low in his throat, and set his teeth gently against her skin, tugging lightly, drawing a helpless sound from her.

He lifted his head to say, “Oh, God, you’re a screamer, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” she said irritably, and pushed his head back down.

“Bossy!”

“Will you just—oh fuck,” she interrupted herself when he licked a neat circle around her other nipple and then dragged the flat of his tongue across it.

“I’m getting there,” he answered. She’d had just about enough of his backchat, so she got her fingers in his hair again and pulled him up so she could kiss him. It was tentative for a heartbeat, maybe two, and then she let out a low hum of approval and he relaxed slightly and it turned demanding, just this side of rough.

It wasn’t romantic, but neither of them wanted it to be. They challenged each other instead, playfully competitive in the way they were with everything else. It was fun—just a different sort of fun to what they usually indulged in. He tasted like whiskey, and they both tasted like cigarettes, and Éponine couldn’t stop rolling her hips, little muted motions that he noticed nonetheless; he shifted to press his thigh between her legs, and she made a high-pitched noise of appreciation.

Maybe he didn’t make her feel giddy and light and sick with longing, but she didn’t need to fake the shiver that ran through her when he trailed one hand down her belly and inched his fingertips beneath the waistband of her underwear. That was down to a much baser instinct, but it was real nonetheless.

“Can I take these off?” he asked against her lips, and the sound of his voice was almost jarring, because he sounded exactly like he always did, so familiar. For an instant all Éponine could think was _oh my God this is_ Grantaire _, this is my_ friend _, and we’re_ —but she pushed that thought aside. She was hardly going to stop now, when they were both this far gone, fuck, she just wanted to come, and she was fairly sure he did too. That was all this was. There was no harm in it.

She helped him get her underwear off.

He moved down the bed to kneel between her thighs, and she barely kept herself from bucking her hips up in anticipation. He pressed a kiss to the inside of one thigh and said, “I want to make you come before I fuck you, can I do that?”

“I don’t know,” she taunted, “can you?”

He laughed softly, and then his mouth was on her. He wasn’t at all hesitant, but he wasn’t rushed, either. He got a hand on the back of one of her thighs and gently pushed it back; and then he settled into a steady, consistent pattern of licking and sucking, teasing her clit with the tip of his tongue, and—“Oh my _God_ , you’re good at this,” she gasped.

“No need to sound so surprised,” he lifted his head to tell her, and then laughed again when she made a frustrated sound at the sudden lack of contact. “Are you always this impatient?”

“I swear to God I am this close to throwing you on your back and straddling your face,” she gritted out.

He hummed thoughtfully. “That sounds kinda nice,” he admitted. “Do you want to?”

She had meant it as a joke, but if he was up for it she supposed she was willing to try it. “Yeah, okay. Move.”

“Bossy,” he said again, but he crawled back up the bed willingly enough. She got a leg either side of his shoulders so she was more or less sitting on his chest, and she felt rather foolish until he pushed her up on her knees with his hands on her ass and his open mouth found her cunt again.

She quickly found she had more control this way, that tilting her hips just so would leave him no choice but to lick her clit, that rocking back was all the hint he needed to bury his tongue as far inside her as he could manage. She ground down slightly, mouth open and panting as she stared down at him; his eyes were closed, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks, and there was a tiny furrow of concentration between his brows as he worked her unrelentingly with lips and tongue. She tipped her head back and shut her eyes, rocking her hips against his mouth. His hands slowly traced parallel paths from her hips to her waist, and when she looked down again his eyes were open.

She could only imagine what she looked like, her stomach trembling and her chest heaving and her hair falling loose around her shoulders; she supposed it mustn’t have been too uninspiring, because he moaned. She felt it more than she heard it, and the moan she gave in response was much louder. His tongue never hesitated, not even when she started to unravel and her hips bucked with a little more force than she intended, and not when she whined, “ _Fuck_ yes, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—” and came, panting hard and whimpering helplessly.

She collapsed on her belly as soon as she managed to clamber off him, dazed. “Holy fuck,” she mumbled into the mattress. “I think you killed me.”

“Sorry,” he said, grinning, trying to surreptitiously wipe his face on the corner of her sheet.

“I’ve never done that before,” she added. She still couldn’t open her eyes yet.

“Really? You seemed pretty confident.”

“That’s good,” she said sleepily.

“You ride face like a pro.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Thanks.”

His fingers were in her hair again, pushing it aside so he could kiss and nip at the back of her neck. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” she said, because he’d worry if she didn’t. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have bones anymore.”

He snorted. “I’m not going to make the obvious joke.”

She scoffed. “You’re such a loser.”

“Great. What was that, about twelve seconds? I make you come so hard you can’t move afterwards and it buys me twelve seconds of not being a loser.”

“Shut up, loser,” Eponine said comfortably. She stretched languorously. She was so wet even her thighs were slick with it. “Take your clothes off.”

“You know, some people would ask nicely.”

“Fuck you.”

“If you want.” He grinned at her and pulled his shirt off over his head. His jeans were a little trickier. Éponine roused herself enough to help him get his boxers off, and then she was confronted with a surreal moment of realization that she was seeing her friend _totally naked_ ; she wondered briefly if he’d had a similar moment when she’d lost her underwear.

It passed quickly, as soon as she pulled him close and kissed him again, and then it became a game of discovery like any other time she’d done this with someone else. She took him in hand without hesitation and stroked once, twice, appraisingly, smiling slightly at his little rush of indrawn breath.

“So when you say big R, you really _mean_ —”

“Oh my God,” he groaned, and she burst into laughter.

“It was a compliment!”

“You literally just grabbed my cock and made a joke about my name.”

“Oh, stop your whining,” she muttered, and pushed him onto his back. “Do you want me to—?”

“I’m not gonna last if you blow me. I know how difficult that must be for you to hear, but try to contain your disappointment.”

“I happen to like giving head,” she retorted as she leaned over to hunt through her nightstand for a condom.

“I stand corrected,” he said amiably.

She tore the foil packet with her teeth  and peered suspiciously at its contents. “Shit, I never know which way these are supposed to go. Did you know it’s possible to put them on inside out?”

“Jesus Christ, Éponine, please tell me you’re on the pill.” He took the condom from her (“Of course I am, do you think I want to end up like my mother?”) and rolled it on himself.

Before he could do anything else Éponine straddled him and kissed him again, rocking her hips down and sliding teasingly along his cock. He bit down gently on her lower lip and slipped a hand between them; it was easy to slide two fingers inside her, and the tiny bitten-off moan she gave was more than worth it. She kissed him again and held herself still, tensed, as he slowly, steadily fucked her on his fingers, until she made another vulnerable little sound and rolled her hips like she couldn’t help herself.

“For someone who can’t work a condom you’re sexy as hell,” he breathed.

“Shut the fuck up and fuck me,” she tried to snap, but it came out breathier than she intended and ended up sounding less like an order and more like a plea.

He didn’t mock her for it; he pulled her down for a kiss and curled his fingers inside her, licked the gasp from her mouth, and then slid his fingers out of her and got his hands on her hips. Éponine needed no encouragement. She braced her hands on his chest and moved slowly at first, taking him in little by little, biting her lip hard against the moan that kept trying to force its way out of her throat. He tightened his grip on her and rolled his hips up and it came out anyway, as a whimper more than anything—and she rocked her hips up and sank back down, once, twice, setting up a rhythm, with her hair in her face and her nails digging into his chest, and God, _yes_ , it was good. Grantaire wasn’t Marius, but at least he was here, willing to give her what she asked for no matter how ridiculous it was, and he mightn’t love her romantically but there could be no doubt that he _did_ love her. That thought stuck in her mind, and she grinned down at him suddenly, panted out, “You’re a really good friend.”

He tried and failed to bite back laughter. “Is that your idea of dirty talk? That’s great. That’s fucking awesome.” He pushed her hips down and bucked up, hard enough to knock the breath out of her, and then rolled her onto her back. “You’re crazy,” he told her fondly.

She drew her knees up and pulled him in close, wrapping her arms around his neck and hiding her smile against his collarbone. He had better leverage this way, and she couldn’t silence the little whimpered noises that slipped out of her as he fucked her. She was vaguely aware of him kissing her neck, but all she could really focus on was the welcome tension coiling in her belly, the indescribably satisfying sensation of being _filled_ , slick and swollen and stretched around him in a way that could almost have been painful if it hadn’t been precisely what she needed. She slid a hand down between them to touch the place where they joined, her fingertips brushing against latex and the heated skin beneath it and around it. She smiled and moved her fingers up, finding her clit, settling into a familiar rhythm of light, teasing strokes—

“Wait, wait,” Grantaire interrupted her, with a hand on hers, stilling it. “Can we just—”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t protest when he pulled out and rearranged her briefly. When he was done they were both lying on their sides, him behind her, his limbs bracketing hers as he pushed back into her. She hissed quietly through her teeth; she was a little tender. “You okay?” he asked softly, gathering her right hand in his and guiding it back down between her legs.

“Yeah, just…it’s been a while,” she said, feeling foolish, because she had _asked_ him for this; but he kissed her shoulder and said, “I’ll go slow,” and proceeded to do exactly that. It was deliciously slow, actually, and not as deep from this angle, so it was almost a tease. She found herself pushing back against him almost immediately, wanting more. He still had her hand in his. He pressed her fingers gently against herself and said, “Show me what you like,” and Éponine suddenly understood why he’d wanted this position.

She obliged, arching back against him and whining softly at the dual sensations of his cock sliding easily into her while his fingers followed hers, learning the pressure she liked, the right speed, the right pattern of movement, until she was turning her face into the mattress to try to stifle her moans. He pushed her hand away and took over, and she could almost be annoyed he found it so easy to pick up if she wasn’t so fucking overjoyed that he had. Éponine knew the value of positive reinforcement, so she made sure to give useful feedback: “Grantaire, oh my god, fuck, fuck, Jesus fucking Christ if you keep that up I’m going to come—”

He slowed down. She all but _growled_ her displeasure. He sounded a little breathless when he murmured in her ear, “How close are you?”

“Close,” she gritted out. He bucked his hips and _pounded_ into her, and she moaned loudly, forgetting to stifle it.

“Can you handle that, or do you need me to keep taking it easy?”

“God, God, no, I’m fine, I can—” she heaved a stuttering breath as he rolled her onto her stomach and hooked an arm around her hips, pulling her up onto her hands and knees.

“Is this okay?”

“Just fuck me!” she commanded. He made an odd noise, muttered, “Yes ma’am,” and obeyed.

True to his word, he wasn’t being gentle anymore—and that was fine, when she was this close to the edge, she didn’t want to be handled like something breakable. An obscene sound spilled from her as he pulled her hips back to him and started fucking her roughly, gradually quickening his pace as he learned she could take it; for her part, Éponine could do little more than spread her legs a little further, arch her back invitingly, and try to muffle her moans in her pillow. She was barely aware that she had reached between her legs again until he batted her hand away and put his newfound knowledge of her specific preferences to good use. Her hand slammed into the headboard and she lifted her head to groan, “Don’t you dare stop,” and he buried himself in her to the hilt and said, with his voice shaking, “Ask me nicely.”

She let out a gasp of laughter, arched her back, while his fingers worked her almost to the point of pain. “You smartass son of a bitch.”

“You love it.” His fingers were relentless. Éponine couldn’t speak to retort, didn’t know what she would have said if she could, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the building pressure, so close to breaking point she could almost taste it. He was still moving inside her but his concentration was obviously torn, and Éponine rolled her hips back to meet him, desperate, gasping and pleading mindlessly, until her voice broke and her orgasm knocked the breath out of her. She came hard, shuddering, and he moved his hand to her hip as soon as her thighs started twitching with oversensitivity and fucked her hard and fast through the aftershocks. He wasn’t far behind her—she suspected he’d been holding back for a while now—and by the time he came, sinking his teeth into her shoulder and moaning hoarsely into her skin, she was almost sobbing, from pleasure or sensory overload or a combination of the two.

She tensed and muttered a protest when he pulled out of her; if she’d been tender earlier, now she was downright sore, but it was a satisfying kind of ache. She lay there on her stomach while he discarded the condom—where he put it, she wasn’t sure, but she doubted he’d found her wastepaper bin in the dark. She was exhausted and very sober, and all she really wanted to do was sleep. But she was thirsty, and she needed to pee, so she heaved herself out of bed with a sigh and reluctantly got into her bathrobe.

She returned five minutes later with two glasses of water, one of which she forced on Grantaire despite his protests that “alcoholics don’t drink water”. Then she crawled under the blankets beside him and lay still and silent for a moment.

“What,” he said, because he knew when she was thinking. He said she was the loudest thinker he knew.

“Where’d you pick all that up?” she asked curiously.

“All what?” he said, amused. “Wait, are you seriously asking me who taught me to _fuck_?”

“Kind of,” she muttered.

“Éponine, I know you think I spend all of my time smoking pot and playing video games with Jehan, but I do occasionally happen across some poor delusional creature with no standards and at least six beers under her belt—”

“Shut up, you did not learn that stuff from one night stands.”

He laughed. “You’re so shocked I’m not a terrible lay. I love it. This is what I like about you. Your expectations of me are so low that I actually exceed them on a regular basis.”

“You’re so full of shit,” she mumbled into her pillow. “Whatever, if you’re not going to kiss and tell then go the fuck to sleep.”

“Calm down, Samuel L Jackson. It’d be a lot easier to fall asleep if you weren’t yammering in my ear.”

“I’m going to smother you while you sleep.”

“I’ll wake up when you start smothering me, obviously, so it won’t actually be while I sleep.”

She reached out blindly, not bothering to lift her head, and placed her entire hand over his face. “Shut the fuck up. I swear to God.”

He fell silent, although she could _feel_ his mirth even when he was doing nothing to communicate it. She was almost asleep when he whispered, “So can I go down on you in the morning or what?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm owning my filthy-mindedness so I'm not going to apologise but I would like to register my very strong urge to apologise.


End file.
